2025 Top 100 Importers & Exporters Cover Story

Tariff-related disruption spreading as US shippers delay plans

By William B. Cassidy

The tailwinds that brought a strong increase in US imports and certain exports last year have turned to cold, hard headwinds this year as disruptions caused by the Trump administration’ s tariffs take root and multiply.

The shock waves from those tariffs are rippling from ports in Asia and Europe through freight docks deep in industrial America.

The latest shock came from the US Trade Representative( USTR), which said April 18 it will charge entrance fees for China-based ocean carriers and lines operating Chinese-built ships calling at US ports based on cargo capacity or container volume.

Given the chaotic rollout of President Donald Trump’ s trade policies, the outlook for the US freight economy in the second half of 2025 isn’ t just cloudy, it’ s reached a point of uncertainty that is crippling shippers’ ability to plan.

US shippers“ are waiting for the dust to settle to determine how tariffs might influence and change their shortand long-term business strategies,” Spencer Frazier, executive vice president of sales at J. B. Hunt Transport Services, said during an earnings call April 15.

In April, S & P Global, the parent company of the Journal of Commerce, pulled down its US GDP growth forecasts for 2025 and 2026 from 1.9 % in both years to 1.3 % and 1.5 %, respectively, thanks in part to expectations that tariffs will result in higher inflation.

Although the risk of a recession in the US has diminished, US policy volatility and related economic uncertainties are likely to linger into the year, S & P Global said.

On land, the freight recession that began in 2022, sending trucking and intermodal rates tumbling by double-digit percentages, is entering its fourth consecutive year. Shippers will maintain pricing power in the truckload and intermodal rail segments in 2025, but they’ re also going to make, ship and sell less.

Despite an uptick in rates early this year, led by flatbed spot rates, truckload pricing is still bouncing along a bottom it reached in 2023. Less-than-truckload( LTL) pricing has been high since Yellow’ s collapse in 2023, but volumes remain flat aside from some tariff-driven frontloading.

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12 Journal of Commerce | May 5, 2025 www. joc. com